NO MONEY FOR YOU: EPA Holding Out on Animas Spill Claims

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, remember when the EPA promised they would take responsibility for their disastrous mine water spill into the Animas River?

Not only are the feds desperately trying to shift responsibility for the actual spill, they have refused to pay one single private sector claim or more than 65 federal tort claims against them.

That’s according to U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, who took the agency to task in an editorial published in the Durango Herald marking the one year anniversary of the federal government’s crime.

If a private company accidentally did what the EPA most assuredly did, the federal government would have levied fines, put them out of business, or both.

Instead, Gardner is having to lobby Congress to pass the Gold King Accountability and Compensation for Taxpayers Act, that orders the EPA to process and pay these claims.

Gardner also reminded us that it was a full five days after the spill before the EPA set up a command center and put on their public face of “nothing to see here.”

Because of the EPA’s communication failure, lack of coordination with local officials and disbursement of factually incorrect information, frustration mounted – and rightly so – over the need for a timely release of a simple, straightforward interpretation of the water quality monitoring data from the EPA.

That inspector’s general investigation report can’t come soon enough. Hopefully, that will happen before we are celebrating the spill’s second anniversary.